Theomastix
by muffers-person
Summary: When one orange-haired death god meets a spirit of an ancient pharaoh, the confrontation starts a chain of events too big for either of them to tackle alone. But when they decide to work together ... BLEACH/YGO/Kingdom Hearts/... crossover.
1. The Die is Cast

The PLOT —  
**CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR EVERYTHING.  
Don't read if you don't like it. **

Yuugiou: pre-Battle City.  
Bleach: pre-Hueco Mundo.

Here is the prologue for a second crossover, since I completely lost interest in the first one. I'm going to be incorporating more series into this one, and I will be reusing many of the elements I had intended to work into the other one so, figuratively, this should come out twice as good.

Ha.

For the Bleach storyline, what I mean by 'pre-Hueco Mundo' isn't really preceding the arc at all, but rather beginning at a point only a little of the ways into it where Orihime has already been captured, Nel Tu and her brothers have been introduced, but Ichigo and his friends have not encountered any of their respective opponents yet.

**Disclaimer** :

I don't own Yu-Gi-Oh!, and I don't own Bleach. This story is for my amusement only, not for any commercial purpose. Thank you.

- - -

The sword slashed through the air in front of him; its tip grazed the underside of the darkened throat.

"Ha!" The laugh was maddened, thrown against the stone walls on either side of their passageway with such a joyous enthusiasm that it made him grimace. The monster stumbled back half a dozen steps, its oversized tail lashing back and forth, the crazed movements slashing against the sandstone and tearing it up wherever the appendage struck. "You missed!"

The monstrous accent, which already had a creepy, echo-y quality to it, was amplified ridiculously by the small space of the labyrinth passageway; the mere sound of it assaulted him, blasting against his ears with a severity that absolutely demolished what patience he had left for the damned thing. "Then quit," he growled under his breath, pulling his katana in front of him to grab hold of and tighten his other hand around it before lunging forwards again, "MOVING!"

His foot sprang from the cracked floor, and for that second the walls and surroundings blurred—his movement jumped into a speed beyond what the normal eye could see, seeming to vanish him from that place ten feet from the monster to just inches away from it the next second, the air gusting around and behind him in the vacuum of space he had leaped across.

The sword edge flashed in the light as he swung it again; this time its hunger did more than graze.

"AGH—SHIT, OUCH!" it screeched, the scream underlying the affronted howling coming from the rest of its throat. The wound sprayed the air with red and fragments of bone, the monster's mask extending down its neck only enough to defend against the lethality of his strike but not to completely ward it. One of its huge, spindly hands clawed at the wound in desperation, terrible snarls twisting their way up past the damage and out of the thing's mouth with a sickening wet quality to them—like the blood had spilled into the inside of the throat as well as from the outside of it. "SHI—"

His fist broke through the middle of its mask, the momentum of his flash-step slamming a force into the blow that all but shattered the white bone the thing was made of. The wind of his second flash-step gusted behind him as his knuckles ground into the brute's face, tearing at the fabric of his hakama and haori and blasting through the short, unkempt strands of his orange hair.

The air whirled restlessly through his chest, climbing up through his throat and dragging out past his lips in harsh pants. His eyes, narrowed more out of frustration than any real anger, glared up at the monster he had punched as its skin shivered once before beginning to shimmer out; the rest of its body had stilled completely. He pulled his fist back out of its face, some shards of the broken mask following its movement as he then jumped back, his expression still hardened with annoyance as the thing dissolved into the air in front of him.

"… … Jeez," he grunted, face still more than just a little darkened with his scowl as he slowly straightened himself up, "… what a freakin', loud-mouthed … friggin' …"

The monster had not been the first thing he had wanted to see after breaking off from the others back in that room—like, he had expected to run into more hollow (it _was_ Hueco Mundo), but a friggin low-level one like that? His lips pressed together in a frown, more disappointment than actual offense lining the gesture as he stared off into the darkness in front of him.

Was that their sick idea of some kind of joke? Or were they trying to draw him into a dulled sense of security by sending weaker enemies at him first and then letting the big ones come at him later?

He stood there in silence for a long moment, brow furrowed with thought and face just as angered and stormy-looking as it had been since first getting attacked.

… _Ugh_.

After another second's thought, he just grunted darkly to himself and swung his sword over his head and down behind his back, sheathing it and then springing into a flash-step once again.

_I don't freaking care._

The only reason he was here was to rescue Orihime. That was his mission, his sole, driving motivation for braving the wrath of the other shinigami and for facing all the foretold horrors that everyone had warned him against that waited for him here in this place: to rescue her, and to get her and himself and everyone else who had come here to help him out of here in one, freaking piece.

His breaths came heavy in his chest as he ran, more than just exertion driving the muscles in his body into overdrive. He wanted out of this labyrinth—the feel of it made him restless, tense to get out and get rid of the feeling of being a trapped rat. He wanted to find an enemy, find a nice, airy open space and fight that enemy and defeat him and move on to something bigger. His eyes darted from side to side every few seconds, wanting and expecting an attack and growing agitated with a little more paranoia every time his fleeting glance turned up nothing.

He didn't want to run through an endless maze and get nowhere but more impatient and irritated with each passing minute.

The darkness was freaking suffocating here; it lined the walls and edges of the floor so thickly he almost felt like he was in midair half the time, not being able to see anything but black shadows at his left and right and only the sight of a dimly lit, endless corridor stretching out before him. His feet kicked up little clouds of dust as he ran, the heavier sand littering the tanned stone below him flying every which direction as his sandals kicked it askew.

That sand was another thing that unnerved him, too; Hueco Mundo was a desert and had sand, but it wasn't supposed to be colored sand. A dead land meant that everything inside of it should be dead and withered (to him, at least), but the sand here wasn't at all—it looked like the sand back home did, nice and tanned and golden and _alive_.

He kept running, all but glowering at the stretching blackness before him as a few seconds passed before he harshly shook his head, sending his vision into such a spinning dizziness that he almost crashed into a wall.

_Why the HELL am I thinking about sand? Jeezus …_

Something moved up ahead. Sand flew up around his sandals as he skidded to an immediate stop, his hand already up behind his head with his fingers closing around his sword hilt as he stared, eyes cold and narrowed, into the darkness before him. He had seen something flicker in there—a sort of light, too bright to have come from the torches in the distance both ahead of and behind him in the weakly illuminated the stretch he stood in.

His face darkened, the muscles beneath it stiffening in expectancy of an attack. "Who's there?"

The question had been more of a demand than a real inquiry, the words low with anger and warning. Despite the fact that his minutes or so of inaction before the first hollow had made him antsy for a real confrontation, that didn't mean he was going to drop his guard and rush headfirst into an enemy he knew nothing about now. His days of training and real-life confrontations from similar accidents in the past had taught him enough to know not to be that dumb.

When nothing answered him but the sound of his own ragged breathing, his impatience and wariness deepened. The bandages wound around his sword hilt felt warm, too warm—his hand was sweating. His brow furrowed, eyes narrowing now to the point where his vision was being reduced to slits almost too small for him to properly see through as he tried to discern the source of the previous movement through the shadows.

… … _Where is it?_ … … _Where the __**hell**__ is it?_ _And __**what**__ the hell is it? I can't feel its spirit pressure._

His fingers flexed against the hilt, sweat building on his brow in a sudden flux of anxiety that unnerved him more in its unexpectedness than it did anything else. His eyes kept perfectly focused, straining through the dark without blinking or moving or ever once allowing themselves even a single second of distraction. He couldn't leave room for any screw-ups—not when the enemies here were as dangerous, or as powerful, as the ones that had attacked his home.

He gritted his teeth, his whole body so tense now that he felt almost like he was suffocating.

_Why is this getting me so worked up?_

The air in front of him flickered.

He barely jumped back enough to avoid the swing—the staff cracked down against the stone just centimeters from the edges of his black hakama leg as he leaped back, the jewel-encrusted tip catching the far-off torch light and glinting once with a faint, green glow. His eyes first widened, then immediately narrowed again in anger and realization as he understood the flicker of what he had seen before—it had been that staff.

As his foot landed back down against the sandstone a few meters away, his arm was already at work yanking his sword up away from his back and swinging it out in front of him to grip it with both hands, muscles flexing taut in the preparation to deflect the second blow. The sizzle of electricity next was something he did not expect, sparking out from the tip of that green staff and zigzagging violently across the stone towards him with smell of heat that he knew would roast him freaking good if it hit.

_Shit—no!_

He swung up, desperation and instinct guiding the motion as his spirit power rushed through him and into his sword, massing for the briefest instant before exploding in a burst of power out of the entire length of the blade and into the opposing attack; the interception exploded between them.

"Damnit—!" he ground out between gritted teeth, his sandals skidding back across the stone as the wind from the explosion slammed mercilessly into his body and threw him stumbling back. His sword shuddered in his hands as he struggled to save his footing, vibrating below his fingers with the aftershock like it had taken the attack head-on instead of just intercepting it.

His foot slammed down against the stone in a desperate effort to regain his balance, cracking and uprooting the floor as his spirit power rushed to swarm below his feet, his arms already swinging back with his sword high above his head for an attack.

_What the hell is this feeling?_

He gritted his teeth, entire body lunging forward without a second's warning into a flash-step before the whirlwind of power at his front had even started to fade. The tingle forked through his sword and into his hands with hot agony, slamming through his body with an electrical shock that yanked a snarling yelp of equal parts pain and surprise from up out of his throat, and not only that—it struck him with a flash of paralysis that completely threw him off guard.

His sandal caught against the uneven stone, and his momentum threw him violently off balance and onto his back. He hit the ground with another snarled grunt, this time the sound more parts offense and humiliation than actual pain as one of his hands flashed from his sword for a dangerous, fleeting movement to brace itself against the stone beneath him, legs already moving to drag themselves desperately under him and get him back on his feet.

_My body—it's ... it's numb! What did I get hit with? Lightning? _

"No. Magic."

The voice froze him, soft but loud through the corridor behind him, echoing against the walls and in his ears. He surged to his feet and whirled around, the blade of his sword scraping against the stone as he pulled it up with him. The flash of movement when he turned hit him fast—too fast—in the middle of his stomach, the head of the staff slamming into him with a force he couldn't imagine that all but blasted every ounce of air from his lungs.

He doubled over, ragged gasps dragging out from his mouth as the staff was yanked back as swiftly as it had been thrust forward, the green-jeweled tip again flashing its glow against his eyes. His knees hit the stone hard as he fell to them with a grunt, utterly winded and unable to do anything more than gasp hoarsely for air. His sword fell to the stone at his side, his hand still refusing to let go of it but his arm pulling in close to his stomach and pulling the hilt of the sword in with it, chest heaving in its efforts to get his breath back.

… _Where the … hell did that voice come from? And why … … why can't I feel its spirit pressure?_

His eyes, slightly glazed but still very much livid, burned with deepening anger.

_What the __**hell**__ is attacking me?_

"Very good, my magician."

He jerked his head up, entire face tightened with hostility and flushed from his hard breathing. The staff head hovered in the air just in front of his face, the green jewel flickering its weird light at him again, though at this close of a vantage he could now see where it was coming from—the inside of the jewel, burning there with some sort of light that he knew wasn't fire, but couldn't be electricity either.

The earlier word rang in his ears: _Magic?_

The wielder of the staff loomed up in front of him, the shadow of the body very much human but heavily costumed—it was covered head to toe in some sort of deep purple robes, with what looked to be harder and darker material of the same color acting as armor on its arms and shoulders and head. His teeth ground down against each other so hard he swore he broke a few of them, a single thought flooding his mind with both an anger and a panic so intense that its answering adrenaline possessed him completely:

Vasto Lorde.

_Finally._

The creature swung the staff back without warning, the long weapon spinning wildly in its hands and the head of it again sparking ablaze with a green glow as the figure reared back, intending to launch a second strike. He surged angrily to his feet, the tip of his sword gouging a practical valley in the stone where it sliced through as his spirit power flooded again through his body and into the blade. The fingers of his other hand flashed around the hilt, tightening their grip on the bandages there as he swung his arms high above his head in the same second as the monster, this time his face hardened with resolve.

That voice rang out again, the words sharp now, and harsh with confidence. "Now—finish it!"

"Getsuga—" he snarled, his tone low in his throat as he swung the sword mightily down in retaliation against the enemy command, the spirit power condensed in it rushing forth from its swing in a thundering, inescapable wave "—TENSHOU!"

_Moon-Fang Piercer of the Heavens.  
_

_- - -_

**TBC**.


	2. The Monster is a Man

Thanks, Tragedyluver! I'll explain as much as I can about the aspects of each series I use as their separate parts become more integral. =D

* * *

- - -

His eyes widened. He jumped back without hesitation, surprise snarling past his lips as his dark magician took the attack for him and lunged between himself and the black-robed monster, the green staff already flashing aglow with counterattack.

The white magic unleashed from that sword was catastrophic; it tore out of the blade with an unearthly sound—a howling, screeching echo of power—and in the second that it loosed itself that sound frightened him. His steps felt sluggish and stumbled, boots scuffing against the stone as he tripped over himself in his sudden want to get backwards, to get out of reach of that terrifying white light that howled so violently at him from that blade.

_That magic—what kind of monster can do that??_

His eyes, which had over the past several months learned compassion and leniency from his host and his friends, turned cold with old-learned anger. He had felt this monster here far before it had probably even realized, had felt its strength (too foreign and wild to be his own) and had tracked it down without haste, some part of the back of his mind screaming out over and over that it was a threat, that it was going to hurt him—that it was indeed a monster, a force to be reckoned with and dealt with as fast as he could.

But even if his heart told him that, his eyes told him something different; his eyes saw in front of him a young man, not a monster.

The passageway shook, the second explosion shuddering through the walls and blasting through the air with heat and wild energy, tearing against the sand littering the stone at his feet and tearing through the ancient tombstone structuring the walls of the passage. The air in front of him burst against his eyes with blinding light, the white fury from the creature's attack and the jade and amethyst energy from his dark magician colliding mid-strike and exploding upon contact, blasting the air with scratches of power that felt like fire.

He braced his feet, determination coursing its adrenaline through his blood and hardening the edges of his gaze with his power. His millennium puzzle answered his beckons, flashing to life at his chest with the gold radiance of his strength. He flung his hand out, the white fury consuming the distance between it and himself with its screeching howl as his magic coiled between his fingers.

_Dark energy_. The young man smelled so strongly of it—like the smells of the other monsters in this labyrinth that encompassed his mind. Before he had thought that only his other self and Shaadi had access to this room, to this maze of staircases and endless pathways that symbolized his soul; before he had truly believed that monsters did not have access to his mind here, did not have the adequate strength to reach him and attack him in this place.

But this young man had breached his defenses; this young man had gotten in without fault.

His second hand reached forward to grip the wrist of his first, face and gaze hardened. The dark magician leaped back from the white inferno in front of him, his deep purple robes billowing in the blast and his dark staff spinning madly between his hands as he landed down harshly between the white attack and his master, prepared for the venture his master had in mind.

The puzzle spirit gritted his teeth, his frown tightening the facial muscles through his whole expression.

That young man couldn't be a monster; he had coherent thoughts like a human, had the ability to speak like a human and react emotionally like a human—the spirit felt these as though they were his own, he and the young man both inhabiting his soul room at the same time and thus sharing between them some semblance of emotion and thought. But why did he send off such a monstrous vibe? What was it about that young man that gave off that murderous intent? The animosity of it had been enough to draw the essence of his strongest monster out from the depths of his mental labyrinth, to call it to his aid without his active knowledge and to materialize it and grant him the presence of the dark magician.

His fingers trembled slightly around his wrist, the first feeling of uncertainty hitting him since his dark magician appeared.

_What is it about him that my soul finds threatening enough to bring out my strongest creature to protect me?_

"… Do it." His command was resolute, hardly out of his thoughts and his dark magician was already into it, amassing all his own dark energies into his staff as his master did the same behind him in the intent to unleash a combined assault of their power. The white fury split against the unified expulsion of energy, the dark magic blasting out from the tip of his magician's staff and his own magic augmenting the force as the enemy attack forked in front of them, exploding down either side of the passageway at his sides as his magic protected both his own body and his dark magician's from its burn.

_And what is it about him that's strong enough to match my power at its purest form like this?_

He wrenched his hands apart, forcefully scattering the build-up of energy amassing itself from that attack at the base of he and his dark magician's defense, scattering it in a destructive surge to either side of the passageway and blasting the stone there to pieces. The passageway rumbled and shook, its structure crumbling somewhere in the distance and shaking loose on the top of his head and the floor and walls beside him with dust and grit.

His breaths were labored; his chest panted with them, short inhalations and even shorter exhalations racking his small frame with their effort as he stared darkly into the cloud of dust spreading out in front of him. His dark magician slowly straightened up from the offensive stance he had been crouched in, his staff still brightly aglow but refusing to move from its outstretched, attack-ready hover as he and his master both stared, gazes cold and darkened, into the cloud.

Then his magician tensed.

The clash was too fast for him to follow; something flashed behind him, the wicked shine of steel catching the torchlight at his peripherals as he whirled without hesitation to meet it, the blade already swinging down and inches from the top of his head before his dark magician was at his side, the green staff swinging up perpendicular to the blade and catching it in the midst of his own desperate attempt to scramble out of its way.

The blade hit his shoulder as he stumbled back against the passage wall, the magician's robes filling his vision as he sprung between the enemy and his master; the magician's robed body pushed back against his own as the sword cut against the staff and sank into the his collarbone and stuck there, slicing through the arteries and veins and muscle and jarring into the bone as the screech of steel against metal slashed the air.

The spirit bit down against his yelp, teeth grinding together as his face flushed and twisted in his forced self-restraint as he grabbed his shoulder out of defensive instinct. His eyes glared upwards, up past the looming silhouette of his dark magician keeping the attacker's blade at bay with his staff and up at the attacker himself. The black robes, the style and the rustic appearance—they reminded him of the ancient dress styles in this country, the kind of outfits swordsmen used to wear here in Japan that he had read about in his other half's history books.

And the face—the face of a human teenager stared down angrily at him. His short orange hair still blew in the wind of his movement, and his eyes and face were twisted with the same kind of fierce determination that he himself felt—the determination not to lose, to come out on top no matter what. The brown eyes in that fierce gaze narrowed when the puzzle spirit met them with equal vehemence, the fingers holding that sword tightening and shoving down harder, gouging the blade more harshly into the spirit's shoulder and deriving another strangled, half-restrained yelp out of his throat.

The dark magician bristled in front of him, hands braced on either end of the staff as he pushed back with all his visible strength against the pressure of the other's sword, the friction of the two weapons scratching against the air. The spirit grimaced, his hand clutching the top of his shoulder just below the sword's edge and gripping as tight as he could as he glared up at the teenager.

_Gods, it—it h-hurts. _The air tore itself up from his lungs in harsh, irregular pants now, the wound tingling and itching with unfamiliar energy as his blood pooled around the blade's edge. He forced his eyes shut as tight as he could for a second, forcing himself to inhale slowly, steadily—forcing his heart to try and slow itself down, to stop beating as frantically as it now was from the dark energies scouring into his body from that wound.

His fingers on the other hand flexed taut with new magic, the puzzle around his neck flashing angered gold.

"Where's your mask?" the young man snarled down at him then, and completely threw his focus off his counterattack. The strain of the teenager's grip pushing against the dark magician's reverberated down through the length of the blade, jostling its wicked edge inside the spirit's collarbone and yanking a pained growl out past his lips.

His fingers shook against his shoulder, little more than affront lashing out in his words instead of the reason he usually made himself known for. "_What_ mask?" he growled back, his words shaking from the strain of trying to keep them as level as he could. The blood flowed from the cut, trickling slowly down his chest and down his shoulder into the fabric of his leather vest.

The young man's face darkened. "Don't—" he started in a snarl, lifting one hand from the hilt to slam it down against the flat of the blade itself "—fuck with me, _hollow_." The edge of the blade sparked aflame with blue energy, and the pupil within those brown eyes flashed with a pulse of it as they narrowed at the sound of the spirit's snarled retaliation.

"I'm not!" the spirit snapped back, gripping his shoulder now so hard that the pain his fingers were inflicting were almost overpowering the agony throbbing out from the wound. The image connoted to the word slammed into his subconscious at the young man's snarled emphasis on it, flashing his mind through with images of more monsters like the ones he had encountered chasing the teenager down; monsters with beast-like bodies but no faces—only white masks.

His lips twisted in the presence of an almost silent snarl, teeth gritted beneath them. _Is that what he thinks I am—one of these … these 'hollow'??_

The sword's edge flashed silver in his eyes; he could see himself reflected in its blade, face flushed with exertion and pain from the wound; he could see his eyes reflected so close to the side of his face, sharpened and livid with stubbornness. He saw their narrowed edge widen as the sword bit down a little further into his body despite the dark magician's grunted protest, saw the pain that twisted through his face as he bit down as hard as he could on his tongue to keep the agony in.

And he saw the stricken realization—the absolute horror—that flashed through his face when the young man's hiss started again to whisper the name of that attack. "…Getsu—"

… _No—NO! _ With the blade this close to him, cutting into him—

The second staff swung out of nowhere, cracking into the side of the orange-haired boy's head—or at least, was only a second away from doing so before the teenager, who had suddenly seemed to sense its presence, jumped back with a snarl and vanished into that unfathomable speed again with a scratch of air. The gold-embroidered knob swung viciously through the air where he had just stood, sparking and crackling with dark energy though in tones far softer than those used by his dark magician.

Her boots landed down in front of him, gentle and pale blue designs to contrast the harsher, deeper purple hues of his other spellcaster. Her long hair burned a bright and colorful blonde in the dim passageway as she moved into perfect place next to his dark magician, her far shorter but no less mighty staff outstretched as she crouched low alongside her partner, the dark magicks collecting and sparking between them as they both lowered themselves into protective stances in front of him.

_My dark magician girl—she's … she's come, too?_

_

* * *

_

**TBC.**


	3. The Bewildered Spirit

His sandals scratched roughly against the stone, foot sliding back out of instinct instead of active intent as the former two-manned opposition added one more to their number. The girl's bright eyes flashed mischievously at him as she outstretched her hand, the half-sized staff glinting gold in the torchlight. She was dressed like that other one—weird plating on the shoulders and knees and forearms, the same odd-shaped and overlarge hat and the same kind of costume but in pink and blue instead of purple.

His eyes lingered on the staff in her hand, shorter than the one the other had but still capable of the same kind of power if that energy burst at the back of his head earlier had been any indication. He growled deep in his throat, discontent broiling to a breaking point inside of him and his impatience already tipped off the edge as his fingers slowly, forcefully tightened around the hilt of his zanpakutou.

It was one thing to devote time and energy to a fight with a formidable opponent—an opponent who could lead him to Orihime or to top-ranking arrancar who had been placed in guard of her, for example. But it was quite another thing to devote a stupid amount of time and energy to a fight with no end in sight, and with an opponent who didn't even have a shred of freaking reiatsu to begin with.

He gritted his teeth, all the muscles in his face tightening with restraint as he tried to force himself to calm down, to not let his impatience overtake everything and just end this fight before it got way too annoying to deal with. He forced himself to think straight, to think with a level and unemotional mind as he stared across at the three-manned defense now standing their ground in front of him.

When this fight had started, even despite the fact that he couldn't feel the guy's reiatsu he had thought he might be dealing with a high-level hollow. The guy had the right kind of vibe around him: that stupid, self-righteous smugness to his voice, his so-called ability to read into his mind—either one or both together seemed to him to be a common, self-established kind of superiority that all his enemies shared.

But this guy had no reiatsu; not even now, not even halfway into the fight when he had been cleaved in the shoulder with a sword almost bigger than he was had he released any spirit power at all.

And Ichigo couldn't understand that. He had seen the guy use some kind of power already; the guy had split _Getsuga Tenshou_ in half with his bare hands for fuck's sake, but he hadn't used reiatsu. His brow tightened, eyes narrowing as his temper started smoldering through his face anew, his own reiatsu flickering just above the surface of his skin in light blue, almost translucent waves.

A person couldn't fight without reiatsu; it was the capacity of a person's spirit power that could be used to attack, and this guy had been fighting on par with him pretty damned equally so far. And since Ichigo was in his shinigami form, since he was a technical spirit right now, that meant that the guy who was fighting him had to be a spirit too—either that, or he had to have freaking spirit power if his hits were actually landing and doing any damage.

But then again, the guy wasn't the one fighting him—the costumed man in front of the guy was. Did that mean the costumed guy was the spiky-haired guy's reiatsu? _Or … … or something?_ But then why call the girl to his side—unless she was his reiatsu, too? And why wasn't the guy doing his own fighting?

"Where's your zanpakutou?" His question was short and icy—he was holding on to the last dregs of patience he had, and the blank look the man gave him the next second did not help his temperament at all. He stamped his foot angrily on the ground, frustration overtaking his common sense not to act like a kid as he wrenched one hand from his sword to point accusingly at the purple-clad man. "That thing—that freakin, costumed wizard thing—is your zanpakutou? Are you released already or something, huh?"

The guy looked almost confused for a second—at least, that's what Ichigo assumed made his expression falter for just that second from its previous state of hostility and pain. "My … magician?" came the very slow and somewhat hesitant reply, the guy looking more flabbergasted than pained as he stared at the taller of his two defenders, then back at Ichigo again.

Ichigo himself felt a similar confusion flash briefly through his own face, though his was far more short-lived and angrily retaliated against as he swung his outstretched hand in a hot-tempered swipe to his side a second later. "Your sword!" he snapped back, his voice louder than he'd intended and far harsher than he'd wanted; at the sound of it both the purple-costumed man and the girl at his side stiffened, raising their staffs higher in the pretense of fending off the threatened attack in his raised tone. "The powers you damned hollow seal inside those swords! I know your swords aren't real zanpakutou, I know you guys transform when you release them—I KNOW you hollow and I know how you work, so quit pretending like you don't know what I'm talking about!"

"I _don't_ know what you're talking about!" The guy sounded just as agitated as he was. He heard the blood spatter hit the floor as the spiky-haired boy dragged himself upwards off the wall, stumbling forward a step or two with a pained grunt and falling against the waiting and concerned arm of the female blonde in front of him. Those vivid green eyes of hers shot a rather dirty look at Ichigo across the passageway as she held the guy in that arm, the other still very ready and holding out the staff in front of her in defense. "I _don't_—"he continued in a growl, his voice hoarse rasped with strain "—have a sword and I _don't_ have hollow powers. I'm not one of these hollow you think I am!"

"Bullshit!" Ichigo snarled in defense, practically feeling the hairs on the back of his neck bristle in rage. "Fine; should I call you 'arrancar,' then? Or Espada? They're just names to tack onto the same old game—though I doubt you're actually either," he added in a dry and disgusted tone, "because I haven't felt even a trace of your reiatsu since this fight started, and if my sword cut you that friggin' easily back there then there's no chance in hell you're one of Aizen's elite."

The guy jerked his head back in affront, more emotion than Ichigo had seen there yet flashing itself angrily through the purple irises. "Well, what do you expect from an attack on someone who hasn't even armed himself?" he hissed back with that same hoarse tone, something like insult lining the words. He lifted his arm with what looked like a lot of effort and slowly started to push himself away from that girl, expression twisted with the strain of his motion.

Ichigo watched him in hostile silence, his hand again moving to its place on his zanpakutou. The reason for his momentary quietude wasn't only in the slight flash of doubt that had struck him with the other's words, but also some unwanted memory—something he had found out about high-level hollow like the ones in Hueco Mundo, high-level hollow that had become strong enough to tear off their own masks and take on human form and condense their strength into that form and acquire other attributes while doing so: toughened skin, a zanpakutou to house their dormant powers, and the leftovers of the mask they had worn before becoming arrancar.

_Toughened skin, huh?_ He glowered at the deep gash his sword had gouged into the other male's body, grimacing at the way the guy struggled to regulate his breathing, the way his face had already started to sweat in the pain, the way his body almost trembled from the aftershock and continued persistence of the blood loss from that wound. _Apparently that guy didn't get the memo._

… … _Fuck._

"And you?" The rasped tone cut through his thoughts, the pain hidden behind it appealing to his natural sympathies even as he hastily covered up his mental revelation by throwing a scowl at the guy, his teeth gritting behind that scowl more out of a growing sense of bewildered annoyance than any real anger.

"What about me?"

The spiky-haired guy glared at him—or at least, did the closest thing to glaring that he could manage under that much physical strain. "You're pretty good at throwing around accusations," he growled back, still clutching the shoulder attached to his bleeding collarbone as Ichigo's face clouded over at his words. He looked up at him, face strained tight with his contained anguish as he leveled the teenager with a stare just as dark, but just as inwardly perplexed as Ichigo's own. "But those are rich words … coming from a stranger who attacks _me_ in my _own_ soul chamber."

Ichigo's face stiffened.

"What the hell is a 'soul chamber'?" he growled back, more reluctance than he would ever admit to behind the anger in the words. The inconsistency in the color of the sand, the fact that he couldn't feel any reiatsu—the fact that these three opponents, out of all that he had expected to meet once he'd broke into Las Noches, had no masks and no zanpakutou—were starting to draw patterns for him that he didn't like.

And the fact that this guy had just referred to the place as a 'soul chamber' and not Hueco Mundo was not helping—like, seriously not helping.

The guy's eyes visibly narrowed—though from anger or surprise at the question it was impossible to tell. His eyes locked with Ichigo's for a long moment, sharp and calculative as his shortened breaths rang harshly through the passageway. "It's … … where I live."

Ichigo ground his teeth together, impatience and confusion working their way through a valiant battle on his face; he could feel the muscles of his mouth straining, unable to decide whether to just frown and scowl and shout and yell in his frustration, or to try a weak '_please-be-screwing-with-me_' smile to warn the guy away from continuing where Ichigo didn't want him going.

"You're an arrancar," he growled back, pacing his voice slower now, steadier; pacing himself in a way that very pointedly, and very unwaveringly outlined what he wanted to hear. He found himself throwing inconspicuous glances to the side despite himself, gauging again the color of the stone and the sand, gauging the feel of the place and again trying to convince himself that he wasn't coming to the conclusion his observations and these circumstances were wanting him to. "And you live in Hueco Mundo. Because that's where all you freaking hollow live. And you … you serve Sousuke Aizen …"

The half-strangled, half-grunted sound of laughter followed the guy's slowly shaking head, his mouth turning upwards with a weak smirk as Ichigo trailed off into reluctant and very pissed off silence at plea in the movement. The vibrancy in those purple eyes had lessened now, clouded over; Ichigo could see in the gradual relaxation slowly loosening through the guy's muscles that he was losing a lot of blood.

His eyes flicked to the sight of the wound he had cut into that collarbone, brow knitting with some twisted semblance of guilt.

"… I— …" at that the guy's vocal chords twisted up violently and he erupted into a fit of coughing; Ichigo saw the flecks of blood spray the floor as the guy slumped to his knees, dark spots hitting the richly tanned stone beneath his free hand as he braced himself through his coughs. Ichigo almost made to take a step forward, his other instinct breaking itself away from the battle mentality he had driven into himself before coming here as his humanity took over.

That staff stopped him in his tracks, cutting through the air with its violent slicing motion and stopping short just millimeters from piercing the front of his throat. He stilled completely, the only part of him moving then being the automatic tightening of his fingers around his sword hilt as that purple-clad man rose slowly up in front of him, the staff held unwaveringly in his hand as both he and it hummed with the pressure now coiling through the air.

His foot slid back almost despite him, face rigid and eyes narrowed with his anger as the steely blue of the man's—_no_, corrected his memory, _'magician's'_—eyes locked coldly with his own.

"I don't know—" the guy's voice, despite its harsh and breathless edge, was almost bordering on the amused "—who Sousuke Aizen _is_ …"

_Like HELL he doesn't._

The retaliatory growl ground its way up out of Ichigo's throat, voice and face storming over in his quiet fury. "… You're lying," he whispered back, everything in his voice daring—no, _begging—_the other to continue his refute. Aizen was the entire reason for the venture into Hueco Mundo; he was the one who had commanded the capture of Orihime Inoue, Ichigo's own classmate and close friend, and was also the one responsible for the creation of all arrancar.

He was the cause of everything wrong—everything that went out of order and everything this present situation plagued him with that was leading his path to Orihime astray. And he knew that freaking man was behind this bullshit, too; there was no source strong enough anywhere else to create this intricate of an illusion around him, to create this lie where the masks and spirit power of the monsters he fought didn't exist and where the weapons they fought with were costumed magicians and not swords.

His hand tightened in anger around his zanpakutou, his own spirit power dancing above his skin. The guy was forcing himself to his feet behind the protection of that magician, hand no longer clenched around his shoulder but now digging into the gash where he had been cut, his eyes shut tight and his face twisted and grimaced with pain.

"I'm … … I'm not lying," he slowly whispered, his voice audibly over-strained even with the minimal effort of such a soft statement. The hands of that blonde girl steadied his shoulders as he continued in the weak, noticeably pain-staking process of lifting himself from the ground, his chest shuddering with each hoarsened pant of air.

Ichigo glowered at him, hating more and more with each second how much his heart was wresting itself away from his resolve, how the longer he looked at the guy the more he wanted to help him. He heard the guy cough again and half slump to his knees, the weak display of balance rectified only by the protective arms of that blonde girl as she hastened to his aid, her arms catching around his stomach and steadying him as worry flashed through her face.

_Why the hell do I care? This is a freakin' arrancar, damnit—one of Aizen's monsters! Why the hell do I give a damn about how he—IT—feels??_

"Is this the strength of your _lord's_ power, huh?" he hissed back, little more than just pissed off and confused at this point. "Using his freaking illusions to make me start doubting myself before I even get anywhere in this goddamned castle?" He glowered at the gash in the guy's collarbone, feeling more pissed off now at the fact that the wound was tugging on his guilt complex instead of reassuring him at the weakness in the guy it was obviously causing.

"This … is _not _a castle," the guy ground out between clenched teeth, "and I … I have no _lord_." His face was twisted through with pain, but he still managed to wrench his head upright, to level Ichigo with one of the hardest, most unwavering glares the teen had ever seen. And when he spoke next, his hoarse words held absolute conviction: "You are … … _not _… where you think you are."

Ichigo spat to the side in annoyance, his anger and his confusion twisting together and mutating into something that was making him start to doubt his own sanity. _How the hell am I not where I think I am? I can't just enter a place and then be transported somewhere different without at least feeling it, damnit! This is a freaking illusion, and I KNOW it!_

"Oh yeah?" he snapped back. "Then where the hell am I if this isn't where I think it is?"

"This is _MY_ mind!"

* * *

**TBC.**


	4. The Enemy is Turned

[The last month has been very ridiculous. But here is the late chapter, and I'm sorry that it's tardy! =D ]

- - -

The derision in the teen's face was blatant.

"That's not friggin' possible."

The spirit just scowled at him, only gripping the wound on his collarbone. The action was, in essence, an attempt on his part to restrain himself—because though the frustration he felt coiling up inside of him at the other's stubbornness to believe him was just, he knew losing his temper over it and letting his anger take control of his words like this teen was doing wasn't going to solve anything.

And his body was too tired—he was losing too much blood—to risk provoking another physical retaliation from that sword of the boy's.

"I don't … see why it isn't."

His eyes fell upon that sword with a grimace, pain still tightening through every aspect of his expression as he stared at the sight of his own blood stained halfway down the blade from its tip to its center. He knew he wasn't a direct combat kind of person; he fought with strategies, with words, and left the fight with muscles to the ones who were best suited to it—ones like Joey or Tristan, for example, who had practice in such fighting and knew how to defend themselves.

The cut from that sword had shocked his body, yes—but even through that shock, he was not so much of a weakling to be reduced to this tattered of a state from a single cut.

_What else is in that sword of his? What sorcery lies in that blade to provoke this weakness?_

"Look," snapped the teen angrily, jerking the spirit out of his mental deliberation, "I don't care what kind of game you think you're playing anymore, but I'm not wasting more of MY time on it!" He stepped purposefully back despite the dark magician's staff hovering at his throat, that sword of his falling from its half-readied position at his hip to a loose and passive pose at his side as he glared across at the spirit. "If you're not gonna fight me, fine; if you're not an Espada or an arrancar or even a hollow, fine; if you're not even going to acknowledge your own goddamned homeland, then fine—BUT don't expect ME to continue playing this friggin' game with you if all you're doing is wasting my time!"

The dark magician girl made a soft sound of dislike beside him, resting her hand gently atop the one of his own that clutched at his injury as she glared back across at the orange-haired teen in his stead. She was hovering over him like a protective mother, her unseen magic levitating her booted feet just centimeters off the stone and her body as a whole so close to the front of his own that she practically hid him behind it.

She was guarding him so closely; it seemed that every move he made, no matter how little, she replicated in perfect precision. His fingers gripped his injury and hers gripped it with him; his knees trembled as he forced his body to rise and she rose at his side, her grace balancing his haggard weakness as she gently steadied his balance with her own.

_She's protecting me perfectly—every movement I make is guarded, and she's not moving from my side. That … … that has to be why—that has to be why my mind summoned her right after I got cut like this, but only drew out my dark magician when it was just the boy … that has to be …_

The teen across the passageway growled in impatience. "_Hey_—" and that sword arm of his moved in an ominous way again, sparking both the dark magician and the dark magician girl into hostile positions again "—are you even listening to me?"

And the spirit was, but his thoughts were talking to him at the same time and he was trying to divide his focus equally. "You're being too stubborn," he hissed back, his voice taking on a kind of automatic reaction mechanism—an unconscious reflex to refute what the teen was saying and to keep restating his own point just as the orange-haired teen was doing to him.

They were both being stubborn; neither of them was willing to yield to the other's belief it seemed, but that only meant that the spirit had to try harder—had to do whatever it took to get his point across and make that teen believe what he was saying. "How can you be so sure that you're not where I say you are when everything here has so far gone in my favor?"

The teen's face clouded over in incredulity. "Oh, RIGHT!" he yelled back, brandishing that big sword of his in such a sudden, violent gesture of accusation that his dark magician swung his staff up to retaliate; it was the teen that had to drop back to the defensive, swinging that sword up against the down strike of his magician and catching the jewel-tipped staff in midair in a flair of annoyed interruption. "You getting cut like that was in your favor?" that teen snarled over the grating friction of the weapons, glaring at the spirit like the latter was the stupidest person in existence. "You getting your ass kicked by me was _in your favor_?? Give me a BREAK!"

The absolute disbelief in the accusation was more than just offensive. His pride stinging and his shoulder bursting into an all-out inferno of agony as he stumbled haggardly to his feet, the spirit shot the temperamental young man a scathing look and gripped his wound all the harder. "I didn't get my ass kicked by you!" he growled back in affront, feeling her hand pressing reassuringly down against his own over that wound. Her magics were working through it already, soft and tingling and very, very warm—the presence of them were revitalizing his body even as he thought about them. "You call one cut 'kicking my ass'?"

"Uh—YEAH, considering as how it made you practically pass out for like that minute right after I cut you! If that girl wasn't holding you up you wouldn't even be able to stand!"

_That has to be why—why my mind called her right after I got injured—that had to be—that WAS why …_

Her fingers brushed against his own; her magics were strong, working their way through his cut and broken skin and muscle tissue, repairing the spiritual energies that kept him in tact here in his visual embodiment of the labyrinth of his mind and memories. His mind had called out to her when that sword had cut into him, had sensed the wound on his soul and the panic and pain that had flooded through him and had materialized her instinctively so her strength could aid him—so her magics, which were not so suited to offense as the dark magician's, could _heal_ him.

"This _girl_ is the reason for my saying so," he growled back, voice still tinged with the cutting edge of affront, "because the second I needed her, the second you cut me back there, she was at my side."

The guy shot him a disgusted look over the crisscrossed weapons and then, after throwing the dark magician in front of him an even dirtier look, visibly braced himself and forced both of his arms into a violent and very powerful upswing—one that crackled and ignited with the flickers of that blinding blue light again as its unseen forced slammed against the dark magician and forced the creature stumbling back and away from him.

"I'm pretty sure it took her more than just a friggin' second after you were cut to get to your side!" he growled back, swinging his sword back up over his shoulder again—swinging it away from the dark magician, from the spirit himself—and away from the offensive and instead pushing it down and sheathing it behind him. The second of half-stunned silence from the spirit that followed at his action let the teen lower his head, those hard brown eyes still glaring but now no longer defensive or battle-ready—more like exasperated as they stared broodingly across at him.

"… … It took her only a second after my mind understood the kind of damage your sword caused," the spirit grunted back after several long seconds, his stare sharp and now a little bitter as it watched the young man carefully. He was not a naturally distrustful person; most of him wanted to negotiate with this teenager, to understand the anger in the words the other shouted at him, to understand the phrases and the names and the cause this person was so obviously fighting for.

But a part of him felt the darkness that emanated from this teen's soul, and that was the part he couldn't ignore.

"Tch—" and here those glaring eyes moved their brown color to the wound on the spirit's collarbone, watching with plain disgust—not shock, realized the spirit—as the dark magician girl continued slowly healing him "—the kind of damage I caused—what the hell is that supposed to mean? All I did was cut you, and it was such a shallow thing I feel stupid even calling it a real cut," he added dryly.

The spirit made a face at him despite the seriousness of the circumstances. "… It felt like a real cut."

The young man just shot him another dirty look that somehow managed to split itself three ways—a third of hostility aimed at himself, his dark magician, and his dark magician girl simultaneously. "So let me get this straight," the teen grunted finally, crossing his arms over his chest and still glaring coldly at the three of them. "From the way you're talking, you're making it sound like these 'magicians' are appearing depending on how your mind is reacting—am I right?"

"… Well, yes—"

"So that chick appeared when you got cut so she could heal you up like that."

"Yes."

"And that guy was with you right off the bat because you sensed me or something and thought I was a threat, right?"

The spirit felt something tighten in his face at the cool skepticism starting to lace through the other's words, his own voice turning slightly hostile to counter it. "Yes, that's right."

"Right. And the only way to sense me without really seeing me would be sensing my spirit power, right? My reiatsu? But hang on—" his voice turned from its soft cynicism to something a lot colder, something was plainly tired with the way things were going "—you're not a hollow so you don't have reiatsu. Well, _shit_—how _does_ this work, then?"

The forced restraint and anger in that voice stung him.

"What are you accusing me of?" he whispered finally, matching the insult he saw in those brown eyes with an ill-tempered flash from his own. "Are you calling me a liar?"

The teen's face was accusatory and twisted with disgust—the same as his voice. "I'm done with this."

"… I am not a hollow," he snapped after him, his hand clenching into an unfamiliar fist of frustration as the young man just gave him another disgusted look and turned away, his own hand rising to give an annoyed and disinterested waving gesture—a symbol of his abandoned desire to continue their conversation any further. "…You, boy—I am not a hollow!"

The teen's retreating steps came to a slow stop, though his body did not turn to face the spirit again. The latter stared at him with a mixture of emotions tightened through his expression: anger that the young man did not believe him, frustration that their conversation was getting nowhere when it was becoming evident that neither of them really intended to hurt the other (if that boy sheathing his sword had been his indication of that), and more than anything empathy—a need to know and understand what drove that young man, and know especially how he had stumbled accidentally into the labyrinth of this puzzle.

His dark magician tensed without warning; the jewel of its staff flickered with a soft, sudden flash of jade light—a preparation. Beside his body his dark magician girl tensed the same way, her fingers gripping suddenly, tightly against his shoulder as the dregs of her magic slowly touched up the last of wound there.

"… I know you're there."

He jerked his head back towards the direction of that young man, eyes widening in bewilderment amidst the hostility that had narrowed them prior. That young man was still standing where he had stopped, his body dead still in the sudden silence—the sudden deadly silence—that had overtaken the passageway

The only thing that had changed about him was his voice; it was colder now, harsher, and not just that—there was something in it now that was almost pleased. One of his hands rose up behind his shoulder again, reaching for the hilt of that sword and slowly closing its fingers around it though neither his body nor that sword moved to do much else in the seconds that followed.

A cold, tingling sense pricked the back of the spirit's neck. "… Who—"

"Come out." The teen's soft interruption was spoken with the same deadly softness that had possessed the air around them—chilling in its quietude, demanding.

He jerked his head back, pride stung for what seemed like the umpteenth time since their encounter as his fingers pressed tightly into the sandstone behind him, eyes flicking from side to side in an attempt to locate just who or what the teen was referring to. The shadows revealed to him nothing; nothing but a dusty black expanse stretched out on either side of him, distant shadows only broken by the fading, flickering light of the wall-mounted torches all the way along the passageway as he scrutinized the darkness.

_I can't feel anything, sense anything … … the only thing I can feel is that evil inside of that boy—_

The air whispered behind him.

That teen was vanished in front of him instantly; the air trembled and whooshed in on the empty space his body had left, the vacuum tearing the air with a hollow scratching sound as a flurry of black movement rushed his back, something soft thrusting down against the top of his head and forcing him down on the floor on his knees and one hand as the scuffle broke out above him.

His dark magician girl grabbed his upper arm and pulled him back; her weight pressed up close beside his own, her gentle hand rougher than he had ever known it as she forced him back, back out of the way of that blur of black—and from what his squinted glimpse had managed to discern, white—as her body twisted in the same whirl of movement to crouch protectively in front of him.

He saw his dark magician in the fray of black and white; his purple robes clashed against the white particularly, braced alongside that black silhouette which the spirit suddenly recognized with widened eyes to be the body of that teen, the two facing off against the third blur, the white, which his sudden cold recognition realized to be a third body—a third person, an enemy.

The man was bigger than the rest of them, far bigger—the spirit could tell by the broad shoulders and muscled physique that the man was far matured past any of them. His outfit was white all over—white pants and a white jacket, the style similar to the traditional dress that teenager wore—and he had a white headpiece over his forehead, the edges of which flared up on either end.

The spirit stiffened, the energy—the dark, evil energy—from this man rushing him without warning, slamming into his body with a force that stunned him almost too much to breathe. _Th-This pressure … … why didn't I sense it before?? This is stronger than that boy's, and I … I didn't even feel it when … …_

The leer on that man's face was deepening by the second. His head caught the flickering firelight above, short and half-curled black hair and a finely trimmed moustache and goatee some of the defining traits thrown into relief by the illumination—them and the sharp, eerie intensity of his eyes as they narrowed cruelly across at the spirit in amusement.

… … _when he was right behind me, attacking me._

"I found you, niño."

- - -

**TBC.**


	5. The First Step of Darkness

- - -

_You're a failure._

He scowled at the thought, swiping at the shadows around him with an annoyed hand. They scattered beneath his fingers but reformed seconds afterwards in the gesture's wake, tumbling against one another in the air created by the movement. He gave them a stare of disgust as they slithered back around him, circling his feet and entwining up his legs with a swift vengeance at his disregard.

_You betrayed us._ The whisper was cold at his ear, deepening itself to a hiss at the latter half of its accusation. His eyes narrowed as he kicked his legs at the surrounding darkness, scattering its black mass again into wispy fragments in a brief moment of temper. This place had displayed the ability to draw that reaction from him, to excite the feelings he had thought himself deprived of before he'd faded from the light. As the shadows slithered forwards once again a snort of amusement rose in this throat, finding the irony of the situation cruelly entertaining.

Back when he was a Nobody, all he'd wanted to do was to be able to feel emotion. Now he was even less than a Nobody, less than a half-existence, and it was only now that he felt the closest thing to what he'd aspired after for so long.

_Defector_, snarled the shadows at his ear in retaliation against his laughter. He gazed to the side where its voice lingered, his eyes lidded unconcernedly at the temperament in the bodiless tone.

"Is it you again, Zexion?" he hissed, another amused snort passing his lips as the figure of said individual twisted through the shadows in front of him. He stared coolly at the form of the former Nobody, unfazed by the hostility lined through the shadows of the other's expression. Since having faded into the darkness, the members of the Organization that had died prior to himself had been at his throat with their emotional assaults, having a fortunate lack of the physical bodies needed to cause him further harm. Marluxia and Zexion in particular targeted him the most ruthlessly, their whispers and taunts screwing with his mind to the point that, at times, he was so overcome with anger that he had to detach himself mentally from his surroundings before the darkness swallowed him like it had the others.

_Think you can fight us forever?_ hissed Zexion's voice in his ear, the vehemence in the words ghosting down the sides of his neck and swirling through the shadows at his feet. The figure of Zexion himself did not move, his lips pressed coldly together in a frown as his eyes narrowed with the anger of his question. None of them ever needed to move their lips when they spoke; having become a part of the darkness themselves, the former Nobodies utilized the shadows as a vessel for their dissent as easily as they would a real voice. _We'll pull you into these shadows with us, Axel—you can't cling to a half-existence._

He smirked faintly, teeth teasing through the gesture. "Oh, but Zexy," he hissed, not at all fazed by the hostility the other was circling around his feet with the shadows, "I'm the only one here who's still got a _body_. Not you, or any of the rest of you—"and here his head raised with a vicious smirk to flash his eyes at the surrounding shadows and the other members that lingered unseen within them "—are even solid enough to _touch_ me! I'll cling as long as I like."

_Your corporeality is wavering_, the schemer snapped back. _We fought against the shadows just as you are, and just as we eventually relinquished ourselves to them so will you. Your collapse is inevitable._

Axel harrumphed to himself, turning his stare away from the other's cold one. "… You calling me as weak as you?" he questioned softly, the smirk at his lips deepening. His hand flexed slowly at his side, eyes narrowing in their gaze at the shadows circling his legs. Warmth had begun to smolder in his chest, one that—while initially unfamiliar—was now as much an instinctual part of his body as it was to breathe. He laughed, the sound rasping from his throat with no gentility to it whatsoever. "I'd learn from that mistake the first time, if I were you."

_The betrayer is full of wit today?_ murmured a new voice as Zexion's expression darkened, the softer and almost sultry tone trailing its shadows up Axel's arms. He turned to follow the path of its touch with a casual eye, lip curling when he saw the gloved hand so similar to his own forming out of the shadows. _Is that what's fuelling this pointless resistance now?_

"Wit?" sneered Axel back in answer, giving his shoulders a crude shrug to rid them of the other's presence. He turned himself fully to meet the figure materializing behind him, his cold smirk answering Marluxia's with the same amount of scorn. "If that's what you want to call my hatred, be my guest." The edge of his humor was wicked cold, and almost dangerously so; he knew the warmth of his smoldering temperament was as obvious to the two as it was to himself, twisting his insides with a fury reminiscent of the fires he once mastered in. "See, I don't really need another reason to exist—I just need the spite to cling to this body long enough to watch the rest of you fade completely into oblivion before I do."

Marluxia's eyes narrowed in amusement, and Zexion's dissented hiss rippled the shadows around his neck. Unfazed, Axel merely extended a hand and waggled his fingers crudely in Marluxia's face, smirking as the threads of the apparition scattered beneath his gesture. "I don't even _like_ you," he taunted, "… and I just _hate_ the Organization." His hand shot forward, forcefully pulling on the memory of what the action used to be able to accomplish. The strength of his fires had been long-since wrenched from him, but here in the darkness it was the shadows themselves that surged forth to answer him, ravenous for the erratic stability of his temper. Marluxia's expression remained calm even as Axel's hand closed around his throat, the smirk so perpetually at his lips only deepening at the action.

_Don't be stupid_. His laughter was snake-like, twisting a vice of its own into the shadows that had swiftly circled Axel's neck. _If you can touch us, what does that say about your 'resistance'? Are you close enough to the resignation of your fate that you can now touch we who've already succumbed to it? Are you accepting this death in the darkness?_

Axel merely snorted in reply, fully deepening his grin in his unconcern. "Yeah," he sneered, leaning forwards so that his face was not but mere centimeters away from Marluxia's own, "I'm close. As close as you, actually, to accepting the fact that the only talent you ever had when you were alive certainly hasn't left you here—the talent to keep talking when absolutely no one wants to hear your fucking voice." He loosened his grip, coolly shoving Marluxia's apparition away from him. The shadows around his fingers rippled dangerously as his focus shifted, his eyes turning to narrow tauntingly at Zexion's stiffened figure behind him. "And you, Zexy? Surely you have something to add to the same speech you guys give me hour after hour?"

Zexion's expression only deepened its hostility. _Very little—just the reminder that once you do fade, Axel—and I assure that you will—you will endure a hell unlike anything you could dream of. We have all congregated and discussed on it—you will endure in ways only the truly empty could conceive—in ways only those whom, having nothing left and are nothing but motivations fed by revenge, could inflict. _

He smirked in answer, staring back at the slightly angered, but completely serious undertones in the silver-haired man's face. "I'm shaking, Zex—for _real_."

The apparition's only darkened, the mirage of temperament twisting it through with such convincing lines of anger that it almost looked like the echo of the former Nobody had the capacity to feel such a thing. Axel only smirked at the observation and just let his amusement show through his own face, completely in disregard of the threat his former comrade was fighting to portray.

Then a chuckle lilted the shadows behind him. "Oh, you have nothing to be scared of yet—but I can change that easily."

He turned himself around with another smirk, not shock so much as instinct lending its speed to the movement as his sharp, aquamarine eyes turned their accusation to the source of the voice behind him—and the sight that met them twisted that accusation into intrigue almost instantly. The body of a boy stood there, dressed in clothes entirely in contrast to the colorless darkness around him: his jeans and blue and white striped t-shirt stood out brightly, and the mane of wild, white hair over his shoulders even more so.

Axel could tell something was different about him at just a glance; something about him was more whole than the apparitions of the former organization members, more real. And the gold glowing ring hanging in front of his chest was making it even more interesting, especially given the way one of its hanging pendants seemed to be held airborne by some unseen force and had its point hoveringly directly towards himself—pointing at him like the boy had been using it to track him down.

_Who are you? _Zexion's tone had the same kind of anger as his face had seconds ago—sharp and accusatory. Axel's smirk remained steadfast as he felt the shadows behind him ripple, twisting and billowing as the silver-haired figure moved himself from his back to reform again slowly in front of him, the folds of the black organization robes pulling themselves out of the same-colored darkness. He could feel Marluxia moving the same way and made the decision not to say anything but to let this play out a little; his intrigue was begging him to watch instead of interfere and he felt no desire to disregard it.

And the way the boy was looking at the silver-haired Nobody was really starting to interest him.

He stood behind the apparition, still smirking, as that white-haired boy started advancing upon the three of them with slow and casual steps—a pace that mocked them with its ease, like a predator starting to slowly circle its prey. The face on that boy was as shadowed with amusement as his own, and with no less malice either; Axel saw there a trace of dark intent, a twisted edge to the sneer and dangerous glint to the eyes that was barely human.

"I'm the darkness."

The way the boy said it was cool, relaxed—and confident too, like making such an allegation was a usual thing. Axel let his body slowly straighten up again, letting the tension loosen and fade away from the instinctive stance of attack he had dropped into as he watched the boy with interest, oddly entertained by the way the kid was portraying himself.

_You're a child_, Zexion snapped back, and Axel had to smirk at the vehemence in the simulated anger; for not being able to possess emotions, the former Nobody was doing a very good job of faking his annoyance, _a human—what reason do you have to make such a ludicrous claim?_

"It's no concern of yours; you're not the one I'm interested in."

For being just a human kid (and the boy obviously was), Axel had to give him some credit; the way the darkness trembled and accentuated his every whispered word, the way it seemed to circle around not only his own body but the bodiless apparitions of both the other Nobodies and Axel himself was making that claim seem more legitimate every second.

"Who _are_ you interested in?" he asked coolly, finally deciding to speak up as his curiosity got the better of him. His gloved forefinger pointed at the trinket around the boy's neck, particularly at the spike that was glowing the most strongly—and ironically pointing back at him the same way. The pendant was emitting a whirring sort of hum, almost like an active machine, and Axel's amusement deepened as he had to wonder what it was responding to. "Your … _necklace_ is pointing at me, so I'm guessing …"

"… … Your aura is shrouded in darkness."

"Well I'm standing in it," he whispered back, answering the other's soft sneer with a smirk no less friendly of his own.

"Then I suppose you could tell me something?" the boy ventured forth with a cold hiss, his otherwise angelic appearance entirely betrayed by the absolute malevolence in his harsh voice as his free hand made a soft gesture to the shadows at his back. "Because I've come across a tear in the darkness back there, and if you are the individual responsible then yes—you could say I'm _very_ interested in you."

_A tear in the darkness?_ The strange boy had managed to capture Marluxia's interests; even through the other's usual indifference Axel could hear an undisguised note of curiosity, and the sound of it deepened his smirk even more. He turned to look at the apparition of his fellow Nobody as the pink-haired man put a gloved hand to his chin—an easy, casual gesture of contemplation that was unfazed by the information and was instead, as Axel was, interested by it. _Do you mean a natural rupture within it, or something else …?_

The boy's sneer was unwavering. "An entrance, actually, and I assure you—you are not the only three I've encountered since it was ripped there."

- - -

**TBC.**


	6. His Proposition

He couldn't deny it; the sight of them intrigued him, though it was to be true to himself a morally corrupted intrigue: he wanted to know what made them tick and what they were and even who they were, and why it was his shadow realm of all places that they had decided to intrude into. He watched the three of them, gauging each man in silence and playing deaf innocence to the expectancy in all three of their faces.

The millennium ring had reacted to one of them not minutes earlier; it was that spiritual signature that had led him to this place to start with, answering the strong pull that one of the essences had been emitting—a kind of surge that was acting as a feeding ground for the darkness, tempting the shadows though with what kind of prize he couldn't yet tell. The three men looked tired, weakened by their exposure to the darkness and his sneering sympathy didn't blame them; the darkness was difficult to resist sometimes even with the possession of a millennium item and it was obvious none of the three had one. When the ring first illuminated and pointed in their direction through the darkness he had fleetingly thought that it had been the presence of a second item that had alerted it, but upon finally locating the three and seeing them for himself it became evident that it was nothing even close.

That left the question of why: why did his ring point him to three miscellaneous spirits as though they were actually important? Two of the three were barely clinging to the individualities they'd had before being banished here: their bodies were completely translucent and it was obvious they were just holding onto their existences by a thread. He could break those threads with a thought if he needed to by seizing on the power of the millennium ring so he knew they weren't the ones the item had pointed to; they were too weak.

But what of their corporeal comrade—did he have something the others didn't?

He smirked as he watched the shadows tossing and turning around the man's body, hungering to consume him but held at bay by some kind of spiritual resistance and unable to do so. The man didn't strike him as anything extraordinary: he wore a floor-length black robe-like garment and his comrades did with him and while his hair was vibrantly red and long and spiked out from the top of his head it was still nothing compared to the hairstyle his own nemesis sported.

He didn't seem extraordinary; but then again the ring spirit knew more than anyone that appearances could be deceiving.

"How do you know it was an entrance?" the man was asking him now as though unshaken by what the ring spirit had earlier said, and the challenge in his tone wasn't easily missed. The ring spirit rose to it without fault.

"I have known these shadows my entire life. I have lived, breathed, and even succumbed to them more than once. I am them and they me; there is nothing that goes on inside of them that goes on without my knowledge and there is no part of them that I don't know. And when things intrude here, I know of it. And I knew of you when you came."

"But only of me?" answered the man back, smirking; it was a challenge the ring spirit rarely encountered from his victims here and so found its presence, for the time being at least, entertaining.

"You were the first I sensed."

"But not one of the first who came here, which means you mustn't have sensed the others before me."

"I hope you don't refer to them," he whispered dryly with a nod of his head at the two see-through men standing at the first man's sides. He kept his voice cold and riddled with scorn, clearly establishing his sense of supremacy over them. They were strangers in his realm and were only going to exist here as long as he tolerated it—a fact that he wasn't going to soon let them forget. "Because if they're of the same mix as you they don't show it. They're so close to being consumed by the darkness I can almost taste them myself; to sense the auras of such weak spirits isn't beyond my power but it's hardly worth my time."

The man sniggered as the silver-haired transparency instantly rose to its own defense, riddling its accusations with anger though the ring spirit miraculously sensed none of the actual emotion behind them. "You speak as if you have total control here, stranger. No one person, especially not a human boy like you, can possess total mastery over the darkness; it's not possible."

"What makes you think I'm human?"

"What makes you think you're not? You're in a human body despite if the force guiding that body is human or not."

"And you're not in a body at all which means you should watch what you say to me; you're just a soul here and I know of plenty of creatures who would hunger to get their claws into something like you."

"Creatures?" repeated the third man interestedly, speaking up for the first time since his earlier question about the tear in the darkness. He was looking at the ring spirit with an air of curiosity and though it was unthreatening at first sight, the spirit could sense the malice beneath it; the pink-haired stranger was no stranger to deceiving others, that was obvious. "What creatures do you mean? Heartless?"

"I suppose you could call them that."

The man with the red hair sniggered again; apparently he was finding the argument as entertaining as the ring spirit himself was. "You don't know what he's talking about, do you."

"Maybe I don't." He could hear the challenge even stronger in the red-haired man's voice now; the other spirit was teasing him and he didn't know why, and it was that ignorance that started steadily darkening the sneer at his lips. He touched one hand to the center of his millennium ring and it flared up instantly, answering to his call with a foreboding thrum of power. "But I know the creatures here better than you; any of the monsters here are at my beck and call and can destroy you in a moment if I ask."

"I don't think you know what he's talking about at all. I don't think you even know what a Heartless is, do you?" Again the man was ignorant of the threat in the ring spirit's words, again taunting him with the cool humor in his voice. He had an unnatural glint to the sharp aquamarine in his eyes as he narrowed them across at the ring spirit, still teasing—no, daring—the spirit to retaliate.

But the spirit didn't take the bait. He had his own sneer in place and his own humor to his words, retaliating with hidden threat and malevolence instead of the physical retaliation it looked like the man was asking for. He wasn't jumping into anything he wasn't prepared for and even in their wasted and weakened states he didn't doubt there was something amiss about these spirits; he could sense something missing inside of them that didn't feel right and he wasn't taking any chances until he knew what that something was.

"Do you mean to tell me they're an actual creature?" he chose to whisper instead, keeping his fingers on the ring's carved eye. The bite of scorn in his words was hard to ignore; he wanted to challenge the man in the same way as he felt himself being challenged, and he had years—no, millennia—of practice over the other man. "Because I've heard these soul monsters referred to as a lot of things, but nothing ever as bland and boring as a 'Heartless'."

"It's a creature born from darkness," smirked the man, and the spirit could almost swear he heard a note of amused appreciation in the undertone of his voice.

"What a coincidence," he purred back, not lifting the sneer off his lips in the slightest and choosing not to comment on what he had heard. He tapped his index and middle finger against the ring pointedly and gave the slightest incline of his head, the rest of his body moving almost as though to bow but without actually humiliating itself with the modesty. "I too was born from darkness, but unlike your 'Heartless' I have a real name—and pose a real threat," he added silkily, now narrowing his own eyes in wicked challenge to the smirk on the red-haired man's face.

"The Heartless do pose a real threat," hissed the silver-haired transparency, taking insult again to the spirit's condescending tone and taking the cue where the red-haired man didn't seem to feel inclined to take any. "You'd know if you'd ever seen one—though I don't see how it's possible that you haven't if you're supposedly born out of the darkness the way they are. Are you a Heartless?"

The red-haired man seemed to be ignoring his comrade's sharp tongue; he was busy maintaining his end of the deadlock the spirit's gaze had locked him in, though his smirk was steadily deepening with every word that hissed out of the silver-haired one's mouth. "What is your name?" he asked instead, the silence from the ring spirit obviously working enough to provoke him into breaking it.

"Bakura," the spirit answered back without breaking eye contact or without moving his hand from the millennium ring. "And I never said anything of the sort—" he now coldly addressed the other man without even looking at him "—I merely said I was born from the darkness as well. To assume my powers are the same as anything you've ever known is foolish and if I wasn't so intrigued by your presences here I'd punish you for your idiocy."

"That's an idle threat; the darkness has already claimed us and we can't be touched."

"Now you know that's not true, Zexion," said the red-haired man mildly, not breaking his part of the deadlock for even a second; it was his brow that tightened and narrowed downwards with his eyes, the whole of his face contorting with a kind of malicious cruelty that Bakura almost admired. The silver-haired transparency—Zexion—shifted as though stung by the words, but the man kept going, "I grabbed hold of Marluxia's collar a few minutes ago—are you saying I was hallucinating when I was having to hold myself back from my desire to snap his pretty neck?"

"That's enough." The low, melodic thrum of the third man's voice, the one with the shoulder-length pink hair, broke the argument before it could escalate and before Zexion could move to act on whatever instinct had stiffened his body so. But then again it was impossible to tell whether it was the smaller comrade Marluxia was really trying to silence or the red-haired man; Bakura could see his transparent eyes focused on the back of the latter with something remarkably similar to hate. "You know you don't feel any desire, Axel; quit putting on an act. It's coming to the end of the road for you."

"But he's right—it's not true at all." The ring spirit felt it absolutely necessary to interject here, his mind and his malice alive with all the information their petty squabbling, no matter its pointlessness to him, was granting him. He stroked his forefinger across the engraved eye set into the face of his millennium ring and it answered him beautifully; the gold glow was magnificent enough to illuminate his entire body with its halo. "The fact of the matter is that you're in my darkness now and I _can_ touch you—you said so yourself that you were claimed by the darkness and that is what I am, and I am something that can and will destroy you. Mark my words—the only reason you are here now is because I will it to be that way."

"Are you sure it's the darkness that can destroy us and not that necklace you're wearing?" said Axel coolly. He was holding his composure better than his two companions: while Marluxia seemed to be taking his words into consideration the stance of his body had changed—Bakura could tell he had been a fighter once, for it was into a battle-ready position that he dropped—and Zexion had done the same but without the attempt to conceal it. Bakura had scared them.

"The millennium necklace was created with darkness; it and I work together. But tell me something, _Axel_," he continued in his harsh whisper, delicately using the name he had heard Marluxia call him by once already, "for it seems that you and your comrades have unspoken hostilities between you: are you somebody to be mistrusted?"

Though at first he seemed to be taken aback to be referred to by his name, Axel swiftly recovered though he was interrupted by Zexion's sharp hiss before he could properly answer. "He betrayed our entire organization—he's a traitor, unworthy of anything but the worst punishment conceived by darkness."

"I see," Bakura smirked and he still kept his eyes deadlocked with Axel's; neither of them had broken the staring challenge—not even Bakura himself to make those observations of the other two not but seconds earlier, instead relying on his peripheral vision to make those observations for him. "Then it's fortunate that I'm just the person that could conceive that kind of punishment. And what made you betray your organization, Axel?"

"Nothing important; nothing you need to know, anyway."

"Quite on the contrary—it's something I very much need to know. I don't fancy allying myself with some nobody who betrays his other allies for no apparent reason."

The smirk on Axel's face deepened significantly as the expressions on both Marluxia and Zexion's faces darkened. "You have no idea how smart you just sounded," he whispered, overpowering the incoherent sounds of offense stumbling out of Zexion's mouth. He touched his gloved hand to his chest much in the same way that Bakura was doing, though he didn't break the deadlock either; the challenging glint in his gaze had become dangerous. "I'm not somebody to be mistrusted—I'm a Nobody, and that's it."

Bakura noticed the emphasis on the word. "A 'Nobody'?" he repeated coldly, amused. "Is that something like your 'Heartless'? And you don't seem to be very unsettled by my proposition—is it perhaps because—"

"I'm no friend of the darkness."

"You don't want to be its enemy either, I assure you."

"I don't need somebody who calls himself the darkness, either."

"You do if you want to get out of it."

The man looked at him with an unreadable expression. Bakura couldn't tell if it was mistrust or scorn he saw there, but he knew he had interested the other man either way. The way his two comrades had shifted ever so slightly too told him that he had struck some kind of nerve; these spirits didn't like their containment here—they wanted out of the prison of shadows and he had just told them that he had the power to make that happen.

But it seemed Axel was too strong to be tempted by mere word, for he was now looking at Bakura in a way that told him the challenge their deadlocked eyes had been fighting all this time had just been hefted up another notch. He carried a strain in his face now that betrayed the demeanor he had been portraying up until this point, a strain that seemed to hold the barest shred of desire though it was a desire that could be exploited nonetheless—a desire for freedom.

"Are you saying you can get me out here?" he said quietly, everything in his face daring the ring spirit to refute what he had just insinuated. But Bakura had no such intention to do so; he sensed something unusual about these spirits and he wanted to see what that something was—and what better way was there for him to exploit their secrets than to have them at his every call?

Bakura smirked. He was in control and he knew it. "All you have to do is swear to me—swear to me and I will break you out of this darkness and free you from your shadowed prison, and you have my word. I just need yours."

- - -

**TBC.**


	7. The Beginning

He wasn't sure how to comprehend the situation anymore; it didn't seem to be in his favor and yet at the same time it didn't seem to be working against him. The only part that he understood was the fact that even if he and the boy and the newest white-clad arrival didn't know who was allied with who, they all still seemed to deem it appropriate enough to attack each other until that information was made clearer—and that strategy seemed to be working out in his favor so far so long as those two stayed mostly focused with each other.

And the orange-haired boy didn't seem to mind that decision of the spirit's; indeed now every time the spirit tried to do anything other than defend himself with either of his magicians it seemed to only provoke the other's wrath.

"I said _quit it_!" the boy snarled at his left, shoving him back roughly with one hand as the spirit had once more tried to intervene in the battle between him and the older man. The aforementioned enemy had come to a temporary rest in his attacks in front of them as he had done several times already, regarding them now only amusedly with that steely blue stare of his as the two younger males regressed into another argument.

"But I'm just trying to help you!" protested the spirit hotly, pushing the other's hand away from his shoulder in retaliation to his wounded pride.

"I don't want your help—you're a bad guy, so get lost!"

The spirit threw him a dirty look. "I am _not_ a bad guy," he growled back through gritted teeth, though the face of sarcastic incredulity the boy threw him over his shoulder was almost enough to make him reconsider the words. "Look, I'm not your enemy—I've already told you this, so why can't you get over it already?"

"Because bad guys are liars," said the other matter-of-factly, as though the entire logic behind the system of judging good and evil came down to facts as mundane and biased as that. He turned back to face the black-haired man then so the spirit couldn't see his face anymore, but he could still hear the scorn in the other's voice paint a picture of the skepticism that probably lingered there. "And you already lied to me about being a hollow once—why shouldn't I believe you won't do it again?"

"What? When? I didn't lie to you about being a hollow!"

"It's true, niño," remarked the man standing several feet down the passageway from them, the low rumble of his baritone voice thickened only more by the humor he was obviously deriving from watching the two of them argue. At his comment the orange-haired boy bristled a little and used the same hand that had just pushed the puzzle spirit to reach down to grip his sword again, but the man seemed content to only observe for now and raised a dismissive hand with a smirk. "I don't know what that other niño is, but it's not a hollow; it doesn't feel right enough to be."

"Augh—you know, who asked for your opinion??" the boy snarled back, which prompted the man to take offense almost immediately and flare up in indignation.

"No one has to ask! I, Dordonii Alessandro Del Socachio," he began grandly with much flair to his booming tone, "take it upon myself to recognize all my fellow hollow so that if the need ever arises I can call each and every one of them by name and pay my respects and that—" and here he gestured at the puzzle spirit "—is no hollow of Las Noches!"

"… … Dornandi Alla—uh, what? And wait a minute—are you saying he's a hollow outside of Las Noches or something then?"

"It's _Dordonii_," the man hissed back through clenched teeth, the once-deep voice hitting a pitch of such high indignation that the puzzle spirit could have sworn he heard it crack through its fury, "and no, he's not a hollow at all! Don't twist what I said!"

"Well word stuff better!" the orange-haired boy shot back, sounded just as pissed off as the man he was goading. "And how can you know every hollow inside the whole castle—there's got to be at least a hundred of them here, right? And you know every one? Which is the one guarding Orihime?"

"You'll have to fight me if you want that kind of information."

"With pleasure," growled the boy, dropping his body into an offensive stance as he prepared himself to attack. The puzzle spirit interceded by reaching forward and grabbing hold of the folds of the boy's black haori, his own impatience overriding his usual tendency to reason as he matched the boy's glare of retaliation over his shoulder with another of his own.

"No, you wait. You tell me when I lied to you about being a hollow, because I never once admitted to being such a thing."

"Well then you lied about this place being your 'soul chamber' or whatever the hell it was instead of Hueco Mundo, because this guy's obviously an arrancar and that's the only place they come from—now get the hell off of me," he hissed warningly, roughly shrugging the puzzle spirit's hand from his haori sleeve and moving himself back a few steps for good measure—back away from the spirit himself, but towards the body of Dordonii standing just several feet away.

The puzzle spirit just glared back at him as the boy threw him one last dirty look before turning himself around, only to sag his shoulders in visual frustration as the spirit then chose to call purposefully after him, "But then doesn't that mean one of you is a liar as well? You say all these hollow only come from this 'Hueco Mundo' and yet I distinctly remember just hearing that man say he knew all the hollow in some place called 'Las Noches'—"

"They're the same thing," snarled the boy through clenched teeth, turning his head slowly back over his shoulder to again focus now a very darkened and very warning stare at the puzzle spirit. The spirit didn't faze so easily though, and matched the silent warning with only another challenging glare of his own, though at the sound of Dordonii's low chuckling both of their attentions divided to direct the same distemper at him.

The white-dressed man had seemed to have regained some of his earlier composure for he was now staring at the two of them with the same half-stoic, half-smirking façade he'd worn earlier, though the smirk he was wearing at present had significantly deepened by the time he caught both of their attentions. "See, niño—he can't be a hollow if he doesn't even know the difference between the two."

"Yeah, he can—he could just be lying about not knowing, so stop butting in."

"But then what is the difference?" persisted the puzzle spirit tensely, wanting to start making sense of some of situation before these two strangers left him behind completely in their discussion. He turned his eyes back on the orange-haired boy again, trying and failing to take some of the hostility out of his expression for the other and finding himself slowly realizing the other's friendliness wasn't going to be won over very easily anyway. "And what's the difference between a 'hollow' and an 'arrancar'? You called yourself a 'hollow'—" and here he looked at Dordonii for emphasis for a second before his gaze flicked back to the boy "—but you called him an 'arrancar,' so what's the difference?"

"They're the same thing, too!"

"Then why do they have different names?" snapped back the puzzle spirit, stung by the abrupt annoyance on the orange-haired boy's tongue at the same time that Dordonii made a sound of snorted dissent.

"And I'd thank you not to compare my strength to that of a mere hollow's, niño," he warned coolly, which prompted the orange-haired boy to swear loudly to himself and round again on the puzzle spirit in a way that almost reminded the former of the manner that a child would throw a temper tantrum—he even stomped his foot on the floor.

"Shut up, both of you—just shut the hell up. A hollow's a freakin' monster, a ghost, a bad spirit—whatever the hell you want to call it—and an arrancar's just a juiced up hollow. And the same goes for Hueco Mundo: it's the hollow realm and Las Noches is a place inside of it—_this_ place inside it, actually," he added testily, catching the puzzle spirit's dirty look and throwing back an even dirtier one of his own in revenge.

"My soul chamber isn't called 'Las Noches'."

"Well good thing this place isn't your soul chamber then."

"You're being stupid and stubborn," grumbled the puzzle spirit back, gritting his own teeth now the same way the boy had earlier as his emotions started getting too discontent to ignore any longer. The other teen just gave him a scathing look and turned around again, this time blatantly intending to ignore the puzzle spirit no matter but the spirit wasn't going to have that—he wanted answers, and the other boy had started all this by his intrusion so be damned if he wasn't going to be the one to give them. "Who's Orihime?"

The teen's back stiffened slightly but if he had felt any stronger reaction than that the spirit couldn't tell from only looking at him. "None of your business."

"It's my business if she's lost in my soul chamber."

"She's not lost—she was … taken away from us, and we're here to get her back. And shut up—this isn't your soul chamber."

"Who's 'us'?" questioned the spirit then, disregarding the stab at his claim to the labyrinth though he felt his eye twitch a little as he forced himself not to comment on it.

The teen hesitated again, as though realizing some kind of mistake, and in the seconds' hesitation it took him to try and come up with a better answer it seemed Dordonii deemed that an advantageous moment to jump into the conversation. "Two humans, two shinigami—well, three shinigami counting yourself, right niño?" he smirked, lifting up one hand to count the numbers idly off on his fingers.

"Who was talking to you?" the orange-haired teen growled back.

The puzzle spirit meanwhile was finding his thoughts stumbling over the words the 'arrancar' had used—well, the one word most specifically, that one being 'shinigami,' which was a term he recognized from passages of his other's school textbooks. "That's a … a god of death?" he whispered, feeling himself bristling slightly at the thought as his eyes then flicked warningly to the form of the orange-haired teen. "You're a god of death?"

"Trust me—it's not what you think," the teen muttered, giving him another tired glare before Dordonii again interrupted them both with a bout of raucous laughter. As they both turned to glare him down again he leveled them with a wicked smirk, holding the same hand he had been counting off of now up to his chin as he thumbed his goatee meditatively.

"That's it; the strange surge from earlier had to have come from _you_, niño," he whispered, focusing the puzzle spirit with a grin that unsettled the spirit's very core with its curiosity. Almost without his active consent he found himself taking a step back, leveling the far taller and more muscular man with an expression of warning distaste—a warning backed only by the fluid movement of his magicians as they leaped into view from where they had been hanging back all this time as the spirit's flash of emotion called out to them.

"What strange surge?"

"It's nothing—just a feeling I got, something I felt I should check out for myself and indeed I'm glad I did," said Dordonii amusedly, his sculpted face twisting ever so slightly into a semblance of the same malevolent aura the spirit had sensed from him when he had first attacked. The air started trembling again, nothing overly noticeable but the spirit recognized it as being the visual follow-up to that tingling feeling from before—that whatever epiphany had struck the white-clad man, it had excited him enough to rouse something within him that was destabilizing the air again.

He looked at the orange-haired teen to see the other gripping his sword with two hands now, and wearing a changed expression that was nowhere near as childishly temperamental as it had been just seconds earlier. "Where's Orihime?" the teen asked softly, directing the question at Dordonii with a kind of unspoken warning that the puzzle spirit felt in the air again; it was just like the aura from Dordonii, hard flickering of something unseen that was upsetting the air.

"I told you, niño—if you want information you're going to have to fight me for it."

"Then draw your sword."

"Oh don't worry, niño—I will," smirked Dordonii, letting his hand finally drop from his chin as he focused that hardened, steel-blue stare of his across at not only the orange-haired teen, but also at the puzzle spirit himself, "but on one condition."

"What?"

"I want to fight you and the other niño together, but I want to fight you both at once—and you have to come at me with everything you've got," he added with a sneer, "or you won't be learning anything about where that niña is at all."

- - -

**TBC.**


End file.
